Miark wrote:
Here in the UK such a position is illegal, but that doesn't always mean anythingif 90%plus of all user run windows, and people fear change, and you sell computers, the people who make windows (MS) say "you will sell all your machines with windows, or you will not sell any with it.My question is more on the legal side. How can _any_ company dictate what their resellers will sell? And that goes _double_ for a monopoly.
...would you give in?
M$ was taken to court, were they not? What did they do there, bake
muffins and played with Barbies in the sandbox? Was anything accomplished
in that lawsuit?
can be done about it, it usually means someone rich enough to pay the legal
costs has got to take them on in court and win to get their money back, and few
people want to try that with M$ ,the UK Government could try such a thing , and they have a body called the MMC , Mergers and Monopolies Commission , and usually they do try, but M$ are so large and UK governemnt is relatively weak in relation to M$, but
The European Commission is not weak and it has it's teeth right into M$ currently
but just like the wheels of Justice it grinds ever so slowly but ever so surely.
My guess, and that is all it is, M$ is even more worried about the European
Commission's machinations than it was about the US governments efforts, for
one thing the European Commission is less easily bought, no insult intended,
in regard to US institiutions, and I think any final settlement will be harder on M$
than the US governemnt has been. Time will tell.Also Europe is a common market
of 470 million now and growing , when the next 11 countries join it will be over
500million, and no company no matter how rich and resourceful can ignore the
commercial consequencies of it's monoplistic policies will have on resulting sales,
especially now that alternatives are a reallity. many of those newer EEC joinee's will
be relatively less committed to M$ than current M$ customers, plus in my view
M$ have made a fatal marketing error with XP by making the licensce terms even
more userous than before. The one thing that puzzles me though is why more smaller
firms, the private owner retail computer outfits don't put nice litle linux boxes
together and demonstrate them to joe public . I would of though here was a definate
commercial advantage for them. They have the technical nouse to perfect an
installation and they can get the equipement relatively easy as I can, but they
don't. I suppose it's a combination of customer lethargy and commercial inertia.
Someday someone with drive and commercial acumen will do it.
John
--
John Richard Smith
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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